ARKit: a game-changer for the Metaverse

I’m particularly excited about Augmented Reality. If you haven’t seen some of the demo’s, I would *highly* recommend that you take a look. I’ve embedded a few here because they are way too cool not to see:

Why is ARKit different than what’s already in market?

At USV we’ve had a Google Tango for over a year. When people describe applications for ARKit, say for instance dropping IKEA furniture objects into your home, it seems a lot like what Wayfair has already done with Google Tango. Tango is a bit different from a technical standpoint, in that there are extra cameras and sensors, and as such, depth tracking tends to be better. You can also scan a 3d model of a room.

ARKit, on the other hand, can’t do that (constrained to current cameras and sensors on Apple products), but it can pin an object to a point so that the scale and perspective changes. Essentially, the Pokemon Go you’ve been playing gets a little more realistic.

It sounds like ARKit is less functionally impressive, so why am I really encouraged by its release? ARKit has that “buttery” sdk feel. In dev forums, I see a lot of iOS and unity developers have been able to play around with it, knowing that when they’re ready to release, their products will be ready to use by consumers who have an iphone. Tango is not built into mass market Android devices, and that has made all the difference.

What’s going to emerge from ARKit?

I have no idea. But, AR/VR feels like mobile in the early 2000’s. The iPhone debuted in 2007. The app store came a few years later and changed the standard for what mobile first apps look like. How many mobile native apps were you using in 2005 that are still on the top App store charts today?

It’s hard to tell what the winners in the application layer will look like when I don’t think we’ve seen a platform or platforms emerge as winners. ARKit has now challenged Google to follow suit and create AR for mass market devices. This could mean we now have a solidified platform. In a couple of years, we could be seeing Mobile 2.0 in a similar way that we saw Web 2.0.

If you’re an ARKit developer, I’d really like to chat with you!

I think one of the biggest potential areas of investment are the tools that developers need to bring these apps onto the AR platform, but I’m not sure what these tools are!

There’s so many things that can be built: Navigation tools, games, education, enterprise solutions for verticals (ex: construction). I’m looking forward to seeing what people are working on!

If you have some ideas, or just want to speculate on the future of AR with me, send an email to: jacqueline@usv.com.